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Thursday, 30 April 2015

Newlife 0.3.2

Hello everyone!So, from the title of this post I'm sure you've seen that a new version is out. However, before you go download it, I'd like to ask you to take just a minute to read my last post. This is quite an important one - one of the UK's largest political parties is proposing legislation that will spell an end to most free adult content from British creators if they win the general election on May 7th. Please read the post before hitting the download link. Even if you aren't a UK voter you might still be able to help by getting the word out. Remember - if this legislation goes through then I might not be allowed by law to let you play Newlife until I've taken your credit card information.Well, now that you've (hopefully) had a read of that one, onto the new version:The 0.3.2 version of Newlife is finished and I've released it on Patreon. Early-access Patrons can find it in the creations section here. The changelog is below.I've also made the post with the patron version of 0.3.1 visible to all patrons, so those of you who aren't supporting at the early-access level can still get it and enjoy your cheat options.The 0.3.1 release has been made public. I'll be updating the links to the right of the blog as soon as I finish posting this. The 0.3.1 changelog is here.As usual, saved files & templates from older versions probably won't work with newer ones. For new players - just use one of the links to the right to get either the jar or the exe version. You only need one or the other - not both. I recommend trying the jar first.For either version you'll need to have Java installed. A lot of programs use Java so you might well already have it. If the jar shows up as an unrecognised file type, then you probably don't. In that case you can get it from http://www.java.com/. The exe should tell you if you don't have the right version on your computer, but you'll still need to install it to run the game.My next task will be writing the "getting started" guide, and then I'll get started on 0.3.3.Here's the changelog:

Fixed
a bug where you could repeat the “free trial” at the gym. Thanks
to Cubano for reporting this one.

Fixed
a big reported by death25 where the action to accept or turn down a
workout partner was incorrectly taking time in the scene.

Saving
a template or starting a game with a non-numeric value in one of the
personality weight fields will now show an error message and use the
default values, instead of throwing an exception. Thanks to Cubano
for reporting this issue.

Fixed
an issue reported by dm2bf where Ivy was surprised to find you
pregnant in the endgame scene even if you'd already visited her and
told her about it.

If
you find out you're pregnant via a checkup at the doctor then you'll
automatically discover who the father is.

Fixed
a bug reported by cubano where it wasn't possible to create an
athletic outfit with a sports bra but no top.

The
orgasms stat wasn't being increased by successfully pleasuring
yourself in the shower in the morning – fixed.

Added
some new stats that were requested in a blog comment.

Changed
clothing descriptions to support third-person pronouns. You won't
see many differences from this (unless I made typos!) but it'll be
an important step in adding female npcs.

Fixed
a bug reported by an anonymous blog commenter where it was possible
to both encourage and chastise the pervy client at the same time.
This led to every action being de-activated except for the wife
looking in, meaning she's always appear every turn. Now, encouraging
him through the “flirt” or “butter up suggestively” action
un-does the effect of telling him off, and lets him go back to
feeling you up.

Some
small changes to clothing stats, especially the effects of not
wearing clothes of certain types.

Added
a new sexy talk action for the missionary & standing sex scenes

Added
a new scene, which will sometimes happen when you dance on your own
in a club

The whole thing started when the Prime minister arrived home after a meal at the pub to discover he had forgotten his daughter back in 2012. After criticism from the press over bad parenting (because apparently nobody has ever done that before) as a means of salvaging his image as a parent he started his war on porn to "protect the children".

Completely missing the facts like:-leaving a child online without supervision in the first place is like putting them on a train to London and saying "be back for tea",-Chat rooms are more dangerous for children than sites containing pornography-His study showed that something like 40% of children who had viewed pornography had seen child pornography... sounds as legitimate as his unemployment figures. (our area was reported as 1.5% unemployment rate despite 3.9% of the local population being on jobseekers allowance and a total unemployment rate of around 10% for the area)

If his proposals go through it would basically mean you add credit card verification to any sites containing pornographic content or get black listed and face possible legal action.

They have already brought in a ban preventing pornography featuring content such as face-sitting, waterplay, spanking, verbal abuse, restraint, humiliation etc from being produced in the UK.

Well, three questions. I'll try to answer them all, although I'm not a political expert.

Why are the proposing this? Probably because they think it'll win them votes. Next month's election looks to be very close, and they're no doubt looking to win over the anti-sex crowd. And "concerned parents" who've been whipped into a panic by biased news stories.

Is there a copy of the proposal online?Not aside from those news articles, because they haven't put it into motion yet. There's an election in 6 days, and this is a campaign promise. They're saying they will enact this legislation if they win.

What are the chances it'll pass?Well, it's a pre-election campaign promise from one of our biggest political parties. I looked on the BBC today and they expect the Conservatives to get the most votes at 34% with Labour just behind on 33%. In that case neither would have a majority, and they'd need to form a coalition with one or more smaller parties.What are some possibilities for the election? Well:

If the conservatives win a majority then that's it - censorship for sure.

If the conservatives are the biggest party without a majority then they'll definitely try to pass the law, seeing as it was a campaign promise. Whether it passes will then depend on who they're in coalition with. If it's UKIP then we're in double danger because not only would right-wing UKIP surely support the law, but they'll be pushing for us to leave the EU which means I wouldn't even have the extreme option of using my EU right to free movement to go and live in another country.

If Labour win a majority, then they will probably also try to enact a similar law, although I suppose they haven't made an outright promise so maybe there's a chance they wouldn't. Not much of a chance though.

A Labour coalition is probably our best bet because not having made a campaign promise means Labour might not be so keen to push forward a law if they know their coalition partner would oppose it. Labour are also less likely to go into coalition with UKIP, I hope. I'm not sure where parties like the SNP stand on this issue, but considering Miliband's promise not to go into coalition with them I have to agree with Mr. Barnett - our best realistic outcome would be a coalition involving Labour and the Libdems.

@Manty Five: I would say this game SUBjectifies women. Far from mindless porn, it is both an artistic commentary and a tool for empathy which does not resort to the euphemisms that a sexually repressed society tries to press on entertainment. Yes, it's too simple to truly convey a woman's life, but it can still teach empathy by putting the male audience in the position of a woman who has to navigate the social scene from the other sexual side of the equation, not to mention having to look good, and cope with sexual harassment, in order to advance in her career.

In the same vein.. version 0.3.2, playing as a woman from start:when you pleasure yourself during the oral scene this comes up:"You rub up your tender slit... this tiny protrusion so much smaller than your old penis,"

As far as I know, you can't use Paypal to support a creator on Patreon if they're flagged as making adult content. That would include Newlife.

This isn't something we're likely to see change. Paypal are notoriously anti-sex and have a history of freezing people's accounts if they're even peripherally involved with the adult industry. I think that Patreon used to allow paypal payments for adult creators back before I created my account, but they had to rush to change it when Paypal threatened to freeze the account of every single Patreon user. As a result they were forced to remove adult creators from their website's search results, and stop Paypal payments to them.

For this reason, I don't intend to do anything like setting up a separate paypal payment system. I know some adult creators have them, but they only get away with it because Paypal haven't found out yet, and I've heard of small indie creators who've had their accounts frozen, so it isn't just big websites that get targeted.

I'm currently using Paypal on my Patreon. I'm US, maybe it's allowed here? I think I had to enter a credit card when I first signed up, but right now I only have Paypal and have yet to run into a problem.

The cheat options are hard-coded, patreons get a separate game file than the public release. This was chosen over the cheat codes option, meaning the only way public users could get access is if the patreon version is posted. Since the cheat options were a 'reach this level of support' option, they aren't technically restricted to patreon users only. Personally as a Patreon supporter I'd be fine with releasing the cheat options publicly, but then I just won the event lottery so I'm pretty satisfied with the Patreon rewards right now. Maybe do a poll on Patreon to see of Patreon supporters would be okay with the cheat options being released publicly?

It's an extra tab in the character creation screen, not actual cheats. It currently offers checkboxes to start you with $500, $1000 or $25,000 in extra cash (it's cumulative-I use the first two to start with $1500, plus the basic 500 you get automatically, so I can fill out a large wardrobe right off the bat and still afford basic furniture and a gym membership).

It also offers a 'psychic' option that automatically fills out the relationship tab for every person you meet, so you can see all their interests, likes/dislikes and personality quirks immediately, rather than having to spend multiple weeks getting to know them before realizing you hate their guts (wish that was possible in real life, though if given a choice it's a tossup between that or $25,000).

The only other cheat option currently available lets you tweak npc personalities. Specifically, npcs are generated from five basic personality types: caring, romantic, selfish, jerk, and average. The game automatically uses a 20% of any npc being generated with a specific personality type, giving about an even mix of 1 in 5 of each type. The cheat option lets you set the % values manually, meaning you can set things like 50% caring and 50% romantic for no selfish jerks at all, 25% for each basic type and 0% for average so every guy has a distinct personality, or 50% selfish/50% jerk for nothing but selfish jerks only interested in using you for sex (my personal mix is 30% selfish, 70% jerk; guys who just use me are fun, but guys who demean and insult me while using me really get me going).

There's plans to add other options down the road, including options to start with preset outfits based on personality type; I expect cheats will keep getting added as content continues to fill in.

Don't forget that with the 'psychic' box checked, you can actually find out whether or not the friendly old man you have occasional chats with is hiding an enormous baby maker in his trousers, an important detail left unknown in a normal playthrough.

Is there any possibility that you'd host the source code on a public repository (as is done by Fenoxo et al)?

Doing so would allow people to offer small bugfixes and spelling corrections in a more straightforward way. However, it might also undermine your Patreon fundraising efforts, so I can completely accept a "no" answer.

For my part, I'd be looking to tweak a few variables ("why is it so bloody difficult to convince men to wear condoms? Haven't these people heard of STIs?") and maybe do a bit of savegame-editing.

Regardless of all that - great work on the game, and thank you for making it!

The game originally wasn't written for public release - it was just a project I messed around with when I was stressed out from doing properly designed work and just wanted to bash out code. I've made some steps towards updating some of the worst code, but there's a bunch of design "decisions" from back then that are too central to the game to be really re-done in a reasonable timeframe. This adds some limitations to what can realistically be added to the game.

Modding is one of the things that's unlikely to be practical. I might have a try near the end of development, but I imagine I'll find it just as impractical then. Really, for a game to support decent modding it needs to be designed for it from the start.

Are there any plans to add more penis variables? Would love to see a small penis trait added that disappoints the prefers-well-endowed-men women causing a penalty to their attractiveness, with corresponding text (maybe just inner thoughts for most girls, and outward dialogue for the bitchy ones).

I do start to understand my frustration about too short gameplay (52 week). Maybe you need to replace weeks by months. It will be more closer to real relationships, carrier, pregnancy and so on. And it will be more useful to player to understand gameplay events.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't intend to change away from weeks.

The game's length will be customisable in the next version, but proper long-term changes such as aging, kids growing up or properly late-stage careers are things that I don't intend to add to the game. I leave that sort of thing to the Sims!